m the street, a Dachau
peasant-family had taken possession of one of the tables, leaving only
one end free. Their extraordinary, ugly costume attracted the attention
of Felix as he went wandering by. But his gaze soon turned from their
ridiculous dress and fixed on a slim girlish figure, closely wrapped in
a dark shawl, who sat at the other end of the table, with a full glass
and an empty plate before her, at which she seemed to have been staring
for some time, with her head resting on her hands and her elbows
planted on the table, as if utterly regardless of what was going on
about her. Nothing could be seen of the face, but a little, white,
short nose; her straw hat and a veil that hung half down over the
little hands threw the rest into shadow. But the little nose, and the
thick red hair, carelessly confined by a net, left not a moment's doubt
in Felix's mind that this picture of solitary melancholy was no other
than Red Zenz.

As he stepped softly up to her, touched her familiarly on the shoulder,
and pronounced her name, she looked up with a frightened start, and,
with eyes red from weeping, gazed into the face of the unexpected
comforter, as if she took him for a ghost. But the moment she
recognized him, she hastily wiped her eyes with the back of her little
round hand, and smiled upon him with undisguised pleasure. He asked
compassionately what it was that made her so heavy-hearted, and why she
sat here all alone; and, drawing up a chair, he seated himself between
one of the horrible young peasant-girls and the melancholy little
Bacchante. Then she told him what the trouble was. "Black Pepi," her
friend, the girl with whom she had been living, had suddenly "proved
false" to her, because her (Pepi's) lover, a young surgeon, had
declared red to be the most beautiful color. He afterward apologized
for it by saying that, of course, with his profession, it was only
natural that he should prefer the color of the blood to any other. But
it had for some time past appeared to Pepi that her faithless lover
paid rather more attention to her friend than was permissible in such a
case; and so, after a very violent scene, she had not only broken off
the friendship, but had given her notice that she could no longer share
her quarters with her. Furthermore, inasmuch as Zenz was still owing
rent for several months, she had seized upon the few things she had to
hold as security, and had then driven her from the house with only the